Playing Cards with Coyote
| season = 1 | episode = 8 | aired = November 12, 2009 | title_image = an ace of hearts playing card | writer = TBA | director = TBA | guest_cast = Genevieve Cortese as Tracy Stark Elizabeth Rodriguez as Ingrid Alvarez Mark Famiglietti as Mike Willingham Ricky Jay as Rings Man Julio Oscar Mechoso as Det. Rick Malchiodi Dominic Rains as Khamir Dejan | co-starring = Ryan Wynott as Dylan Simcoe Erika Ringor as Harriet Creagen Dow as Billy Cory Blevins as Neil Parofsky Bo Kane as High Roller Sam Ingraffia as Dealer Kent Shocknek as Hansen Phillip Palmer as Campbell | uncredited = Mohammad Kavianpour as Taliban }}Playing Cards with Coyote was the eighth episode of season 1 of FlashForward. It first aired on November 12, 2009 on ABC. Summary Prologue When the details behind FBI agent Al Gough's suicide become public, people suddenly believe the future can be changed. This revelation does wonders for Mark and Olivia, as they seem to be reconnecting. He sends her a gift of some sexy lingerie. However, Olivia is totally turned off because this is the lingerie she was wearing in her flash forward starring the ever-present Lloyd Simcoe. She tosses the sexy garb into the trash. Poker Lloyd Simcoe sends an email to four recipients (Gordon Myhill, Elizabeth Rhee, Gabe Clayson, and Philippe Tarhan) urging them to go public with the experiment and take responsibility for the Global Blackout. Simon opposes this course of action and suggests a game of Texas Hold 'Em to resolve their impasse. If Lloyd wins, they go public and hang themselves out to dry. If Simon wins, Lloyd stays mum. Simon is quite the card player. Most of the chips are stacked on his side. He suggests one final hand, winner take all. It doesn’t look good, but Lloyd is in. Simon has four of a kind. There aren’t a lot of hands that can beat that. But a straight flush would. And that’s just what Lloyd draws. Looks like all those sleight of hand cards tricks he’s been playing with Dylan have come in handy. We’re thinking the world may be receiving an interesting press release in the near future. Janis returns to work with plans of resigning. She wonders if getting shot was a sign that her baby wasn’t meant to be. Wedeck says, “You gonna let a bullet decided whether or not you bring a baby into this world?” He refuses her resignation and she reconsiders her baby options. A woman named Ingrid Alvarez captures the murder of Neil Parofsky on her cell phone camera. The gunman and his accomplice are seen taking a case from the man. Enhanced images show the gunman with a three-star tattoo on his arm, just like the one adorned by the assassins who were hunting down Mark in his flashforward. The team believes they have a mole in their department. They figure the gunman will come after Ingrid, so they opt to use her as bait in a trap. "We catch these guys tonight we can finally put a face on our enemy." Tracy thinks she has to run again when she discovers her dad told Mark that she’s alive. But Aaron reminds her that she’ll be all right, as she was alive in his flash forward. He further tells her that, in his flash, a man told him “the account has been verified” after Aaron handed him an envelope. Aaron doesn’t know what this means, but Tracy knows the person her dad spoke to that day. He’s a field medic named Kahmir and he saved her. Rings Back on the job, Janis checks out video footage of Suspect Zero that has been processed and digitally enhanced by the NSA. She and Wedeck notice that he is wearing a ring. At what appears to be a military base, a bald man riding as a passenger in a five-ton truck who has with three stars tattooed on his arm hands a briefcase to another three-star tattoo man. The case resembles the case that was stolen from the man who was murdered in the cell phone video. Two other men with the three-starred tattoos are seen carrying cases larger, sturdier cases around the area. The murder victim’s case is delivered to a bearded man in a sparsely-filled structure similar to a vehicle maintenance garage. He opens the case. There are six rings inside. The visible sides of the rings are engraved with a Greek alpha. The rings man says, "There are supposed to be seven.” He then closes the case, quotes Kenneth Bainbridge from the Trinity test of the Manhattan Project, and casually shoots the delivery man dead. He calmly walks off with the case of rings. Trivia Production Notes Music Unthought Known by Pearl Jam Bloopers and Continuity Errors * The Los Angeles Post featuring the story about Al Gough's suicide is dated October 6, 2009 (the date of the GBO); Gough committed suicide on November 3, 2009. * Why did it take a whole month and the life of Al Gough to prove that the future wasn't fixed? There are a million less severe ways this could have been tested within hours of people waking up. It's inconceivable that it would take this long for people to answer this most basic question. * Over a month has gone missing somewhere. Tracey returns during the final montage of the last episode showing reactions to the suicide which is less than a month after the GBO according to the post above. In this episode though her father says he had her remains exhumed two months ago. Given that it took him a week or so to get this done we are probably looking at a jump of about six weeks. This could also fit with the time needed for Janice to recover enough to go back to work. Was no progress made on the investigation in that time? If so you would think that the pressure from DC would have become pretty intense. Cultural References * The coyote, associated with the Raven, in Native American mythology is often thought of as a trickster, and the Raven even the creator of human beings. * Aaron describes Tracy's experiences as being "something out of a Baldacci novel." David Baldacci is a U.S. author of fictional works which often involve U.S. Government misconduct. * The number seven, as in the seven rings, occurs frequently in science, religion, mythology and other disciplines. In [[wikipedia:One Ring|J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings]], it was the number of rings cast for the dwarf lords. Unanswered Questions General * Are the other sides of the rings engraved with omegas? * The PDF file Lloyd sent by email was stored on a fileserver beginning SSW. What does SSW mean? * The email addresses of the email recipients were nlap.us.com. What is NLAP? * Other names in Lloyd's inbox included Jake, Lucas, Vern Evans, Sam Dumas, and Liz Coulder, who mentioned Lloyd's boss wanted to see him. How do they people relate to the experiment? * Why does Tracy not want her mother to know she is home? * Ingrid Alvarez says the tattoo men talk about QED. As Simon is explaining the logic behing his sure victory he uses the expression QED (which literally means "which was to be demonstrated"). Is there a connection? * Is there any relationship between Janis's ring and the six first seen in this episode? Flashes }} }} }} }} }} }} }} }} }} }} }} }} }}